Photocell sensors are pos nowadays, his was probably doa. First one lasted 13 years, replacements lasted 2-3 years nowadays. I bypassed it and changed to a wifi switch.
Faulty LED bulbs is a big topic. They don't seem to last anywhere near what's being claimed. So there's a lot of videos about autopsying bulbs and repairing them and what have you.
@copernicofelinis a coworker referred me to technology connections, i never thought I'd be so interested in such videos, however like you said, I watch them over and over
@@copernicofelinis dont forget the three videos about the dishwashers (they are kinda the same tho). i watched all of them and i dont even have i dishwasher lol
my work let me take apart the 480v LEDs they got for their warehouse after they died. The bulbs claimed a 10-year life but died after 2-4 years. When I got them apart, I found the capacitors to be the issue. Checking their datasheet, I found that they were only guaranteed for 2 years of life. How can a company claim a lifetime 5 times longer than the lifetime of their parts? (and no, the capacitors were not oversized or underpowered in any way)
MTBF is heavily depending on the environment temperature. If the manufacturer adding sufficient active cooling equipment such as heat-pipe and long lasting cool fan, the life span should be increased accordingly; of course, so does the price tag.
Everything seems to have a disingenuous nature now, it`s like for the sake of saving one penny per unit ie a galvanised bolt vs stainless steel so as to render a greater profit still undermines the principles of showing pride in ones handy work.
Electrolytic capacitors can be up-rated by about a factor of 2 for every 10C they are below nominal max operating temp. (note: this has to include internal heating from ripple current). That's why a 20000h 85C and a 5000h 105C rated capacitor offer pretty much the same effective lifetime at sane operating conditions. At least Nippon Chemicon and Panasonic have appnotes explaining this in detail.
@@nzcymThat's true for the LED chip where the device is a semiconductor and the length of its life is strongly dependent on operating temperature. That isn't the case, generally for capacitors. The 25,000 hour typical life that is quoted for LED lights is typically the life time of the LED chips and is stated on the data sheet by the manufacturer of the LED chips. But this is the life time of the chip if the LED operating temperature is kept within the limits indicated by the LED chip manufacturer. Then the light bulb manufacturers put the chips on to a board and put into a bulb, then the bulb is placed into a confined space into a luminare without sufficient cooling and that 25,000 hour life drops significantly. When you look at the cooling features on an LED bulb that conforms to a standard replaceable bulb type, with bayonet or Edison screw thread, they typically just have a few cooling fins along the body of the bulb. It's a pathetic amount of cooling. Why would the industry want to fix that? Bulbs failing results in repeat business.
As a research chemist working on OLEDs, it pains me to know how many chemists and physicists worked hard on making the LEDs last for decades only for greedy companies to use cheap components and manufacturing techniques, causing the LEDs to fail after fractions of their useful life.
My biggest complaint about these LED bulbs is that they cram so many components into a completely un-repairable sealed package. If I could actually fix just the parts that burned out it would be a way better deal. But by the time I open them enough to find the failed part it's destroyed. A room-wide or house-wide efficient AC to DC converter and then just DC LED fixtures would be a much more tenable solution, but people don't want to deal with that.
Ive been disassembling everything imaginable for over 50 years and its always the same thing with cheaply made crap that was never designed to be repaired . Its made that way to meet a price point. But it never stops me from having a look inside anyway!!
I had some small compact 60s with a spherical plastic cover and couple of them stopped working early, but when i cracked the glue and covers off, two began working again. Lol And they are way brighter w/o the opaque white cover, so i use them in my bench "up close" lamps as they make very bright light that makes details of things more pronounced. I work on restoring clocks and use magnifiers to see tiny details, so the more intense of clarity the light, the better.
@@anthonyiannone7618Planned obselescence...so the companies can sell enough to not go bankrupt because they make things that last so long that nobody buys their products any more.
UA-cam is definitely listening to me, I was talking about these failing LEDs last night at like 11 PM, and then this shows up first thing in the morning
It's worse. Once you use youtube and google heavily for years, they can simulate what you're thinking. Basically mind reading at this point. You do have to give them fresh data every day for it to happen though.
@@Hclann1 Windows too. I start playing OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon) which is fully open-source with no commercial connections, and UA-cam starts offering me more train and strategy game content. It's creepy.
As a plasma fanatic I just stick to fluorescent lamps. Most LEDs are boring for me. Filament style is OK but most other types are as ugly as the average mother-in-law.
I agree in principle that they shouldn't be made... but the simple solution is to learn how to take things apart and repair them, or shop more carefully.
He should try some of those LED's Big Clive was looking at from Kuwait. The LED's in those are run at a much lower power than rated. I would say as they run cooler they would be lasting longer.
@@michaelrunnels7660 n My attic crawl space is only about 2 feet high and bashing the light with my head just seemed like the reasonable thing to do as I was getting to the top of the ladder from downstairs to reach for some stuff.
@@ThatBoomerDude56 Yup. Just like the cowboy out on the range when, seeing a patch of cactus, took off all his clothes and jumped in the cactus. After he ran screaming from the cactus patch his partner who was with him asked "What the heck did you do that for?" He answered "Seemed like a good idea at the time!"
One thing about the incandescent bulb in your one lamp, that bulb has survived for so many years because it's been turned on and left on. The biggest thing that will kill that type of bulb is power cycling. It stresses the filament every time you cycle it on and off, so if it's turned on and off enough times it WILL die. Though if it's left in a place like what you were showing where it was able to be left on and never change its state of being on or off then the stresses on it are limited.
True. Tungsten has a positive temperature coefficient, so the resistance is lower when cold. When switched on, if the AC cycle is near or at the peak voltage, 325 Volts here in the UK, then because the filament is cold, and has a lower resistance, the peak current blows the filament and makes that characteristic ''chink'' sound when it does. As an electronics geek, I like to call incandescent lamps, directly heated monodes. 😊
The incandescent floods in my kitchen are original from when the house was built in 1994. They are 130v bulbs instead of the more common 120v, and they have always been on a dimmer switch where the light has to be dimmed up to full power. When tungsten filaments are never stressed, they last forever.
You are correct. I saw a slo mo video years ago that showed a clear light bulb filament being violently whipped around in the first few alternations of current flow. On that basis, DC would seem to be gentler upon startup due to a single filament movement with the onset of current flow instead of the multiple alternations of AC current. Not that it's practical to do so, but still interesting.
Your commentary is like what runs through my head as someone with a bachelor's in electrical engineering where I spent precisely 0 days doing EE as a career. 30 years later I can easily impress people with my skill at fixing electronics using the most basic EE knowledge. Thanks to bad Chinese engineers, what breaks are usually the obvious components.
Why do they fail (prematurely compared to expectations) ? It’s simple. Most LED bulbs are severely price constrained. By using fewer LEDs it’s cheaper to make but to get a competitive light output those LEDs needs to be driven to the edge of their existence. So they get hot, and either burn themselves out or the heat kills adjacent components. The thing is, we cannot realistically complain about planned obsolescence while at the same time demanding ever cheaper consumer electronics. Good quality LED bulbs do exist but they typically cost around 5 times more than the cheapest ones. And the good ones do last long. Incandescent bulbs went through a similar phase, for a while one could buy incredibly cheap horrendously badly made bulbs that would sometimes break on the trip home. But when well made, they too can last decades. I have some incandescent lightbulbs still in use since the late 80’s. Also, fight me on this but nothing beats the colour rendering of a good incandescent lightbulb. The 200W versions I have are pretty decent at being subtle space heaters too. (And especially effective at melting modern plastic light fixtures 😅) The best hack* for cheap LED bulbs is to trim the current sensing resistors to run the bulb at a lower wattage / current. Aim for around 10mA per LED and they should live a long happy life. *Credit to BigClive for this one. See his channel for more details / how to.
There's no need to fight you on the color rendering index. Incandescent is obviously best (100 CRI and good R9) because it's just a black body radiator. LED's however can be good. You just need to pay for it. There are many options with 90+ CRI or 95+ CRI or even 98+ CRI. The CRI rating however is problematic. The CRI rating only looks at the R1 through R8 colors which are pale colors. Previously mentioned R9 is a deeper red. And if a light has a poor R9 color rendition, skin colors for example look ghastly. The extended CRI looks at R9-R14 colors as well but CRI Ra value is based on R1-R8 performance. There is IES TM-30-18 as well and CQS etc. but this needs wider industry support/push and we'd need consumers and professionals to ask for better lighting. It's just unfortunate that the vast majority of people don't care so we get sub par products.
LEDs, even cheap ones, don't usually fail on their own. In most cases the issue with this type of lamps is a small (or non-existent) heatsink or a cheap power supply. Just look at third lamp - it has everything it needs, and it serves for years. the other ones may serve a year or two before dropping brightness and eventually failing. LEDs are also better because you can purchase ones with high CRI and almost any color temperature you want, even the one of incandescent lightbulbs. But why would you.
10mA per LED is pretty low. Even ancient LEDS could tolerate more current than that. I would think double that is still within the realm of reason. A modern blue LED is more along the lines of 30 mA rated. It'll light up at 10 mA but it's not going to be particularly bright. Another thing you can do is vent the bulbs. If you can reduce the heat you will increase the life. Every 10 degrees doubles the life. Heat is that significant a factor. They should stop trying to make light bulbs like light bulbs. Come up with a design that manages the heat better. Clearly manufacturers don't care and are just interested in selling product. They should make lamps with built in PSUs. Maybe the Edison screw base isn't the way to fly today? The packaging is all wrong. Stuffing LEDs into a housing designed for incandescent filament is just dumb.
@@1pcfred Well, that depends on the LED. I guess better suggestion would be to look at the current they're running the LED's at and then perhaps halving that or something. In a previous comment I hinted at the LED I/Vf curve. As the current increases, the forward voltage increases as well. LED power does not increase linearly. Similarly, as you increase the LED current, the light output does not increase linearly. Just as a simple example, manufacturer might run 50% more current through the LED's, only to gain let's say 25% more light output. But the power consumed will increase by more than 50%! So, if you reduce the current, the drive circuit will have much easier time as the power load decreases more than the current or the light output does and the LED's as well will be much happier. Obviously the 2835 or whatever size LED's are used in bulbs have smaller differences than the above rather extreme examples but the principle applies. Just for reference, I looked up LM281B LED specifications and it's rated for 150mA at 57-61lm. So you'd need about 13-14 of these for an 800lm bulb. Looking at the Vf curve, and guesstimating, at 150mA the forward voltage is roughly 3.15V. Halving the current to 75mA, the forward voltage drops to, let's say 2.95V. While the luminous flux drops from 100% to, I don't know, let's say 58%. Current drops from 100% to 50%, power drops to 47% and luminous flux drops to 58%. See what I mean? But this is just going from the rated current (150mA) downwards. The max current on that specific LED is just 160mA. There are other LED's which have a much wider range between the rated current and the max current. If you do the same calculation for an LED that's driven hard vs driven at the rated current, the difference is only going to increase.
In my experience, most incandescents that were used on a daily basis lasted around a year. CFLs were somewhat better, but I've rarely had to replace LEDs, rare enough that when one does stop working, I've got to hunt to see if I have a replacement for it
I had incandescents at my old house last as long as 12 years on fade-in dimmer switches. None of the LED bulbs that came with my new 2020 house lasted more than 3 years. Huge box of e-waste now the landfill (we don't have a recycling center within 70 miles of my area).
@@JSMCPN We had 3 LED lamps, all Philips, which switched on automatically at sunset and back of at sunrise. All 3 died in less than 2 years, and all within 2 or 3 months of each other.
I've got some ancient Philips 20W-equivalent bulbs from right at the start of the LED wave. Giant things, heatsink is 2/3rds of the body, yellow cap. Found image results that look like it by the name "Philips Master LED". Well over 12 years old now, they're still kicking. From the heat they put out, I don't think they use the shoddy capacitive dropper circuits that most modern LED bulbs use. If I recall correctly they were something like ~$30 CAD a piece at the time.
@JSMCPN We had 3 ES base LED lamps, all Philips, which switched on automatically at sunset and back of at sunrise. All 3 died in less than 2 years, and all within 2 or 3 months of each other. Now trying no-name cheapies from Aliexpress.
There was an all white second series of this that had a miserable power supply causing intermittent flickering. Can confirm though the first yellow cap one is still going.
Nearly all of them fail due to temperature cycling of solder joints. LED bulbs are tested by running them at a constant temperature at elevated stresses being ON continuously. A typical cheap-o indoor rated LED bulb lasts me about 3-5 years being constantly on in my outdoor light fixtures, which is longer than they last being used indoors where they switch on/off many times per day.
its not the soldering joints. all kinds of other heat cycled electronics handles heat cycles pretty well. and ive never seen any electronics fail in industry due to failed soldering joints yet. even though theres more extreme heat cycles there. its the fact that theyre ran at higher temps then they should. look up dubai lamps. a long with bad power supplies. the whole light industry is planned obsolence on steroids. always have been. its not even a conspiracy. it has been documented for about 100 years now
LED expert here, 20+ years in the industry. You are half correct, most of these use what are called 2835 size LED manufactured in China as cheap as possible. These use very thin wires to connect the die. These thin wires end up failing miserably due to heat cycling. The more cycles you have in a day the worse it gets. You're better off keeping them constantly on. Put them on a motion detector that keeps then long enough to heat up to temperature and you'll have to change the bulbs every 3 months.
As a plasma fanatic I just stick to fluorescent lamps. Most LEDs are boring for me. Filament style is OK but most other types are as ugly as the average mother-in-law.
3:54 that is a MELF resistor, one of the earlier SMD technologies, but still used because they can handle a lot more electrical stress than a similarly rated flat SMD package
MELF stands for "Metal Electrode Leadless Face" but I think it actually stands for "Most End up Lying on the Floor" (because they're round they love to roll off of whatever surface you have them on).
@NotBornEveryMinute The clip is from "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock", directly after Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, and Checkov steal the Enterprise from Space Dock. Scotty is explaining how he disabled the overly-complex control systems of the pursuing Excelsior starship by removing a few parts. Yes, I'm familiar with the clip, and have loved it for decades.
I have 15 LED night lights scattered around my house and garage. They each consume 0.5 watts, and they've been in place for at least 5 years. So far, only one has failed. I consider that a good record!
Excellent video! Or audio. I haven't watched this yet, just listened while walking at the beach and finding junk. Excellent! Fun! Why do LED bulbs fail? At least those I've checked recently, had one LED burned cut, having a small black dot. Could be that they run a bit "hot" to get max lumens per their price, but detailed reason might be what happens when the power is turned on. I'm "seeing" there's a spike of overcurrent which eventually breaks one LED. I fixed those bulbs by shorting the broken LED. A bit less lumens, but for my use it doesn't matter. What matters, is the matter (the waste).
I've got LED bulbs that are close to 15 years old still working, and others that failed in a month. The no-name ones are the worst. Even the good ones gradually get dimmer as they age.
Yes they do definitely get dimmer. I am so sick of being in a house where all the light bulbs are dim AF. As for the so-called energy saving properties of LEDs, it is simply not true. At one time a room had a single light fitting for an incandescent bulb. And now the advice from places like IKEA, is that every room needs at least five light sources. Five LED bulbs and they can't even do the job of a single incandescent? Where is the energy saving there?
@@lazygazzzer I think this has more to do with trends and bulb choices. LED bulbs are absolutely more energy efficient than an equivalent incandescent bulb there is zero question about that. Whether they are brighter is another question and has more do with bulb choice, quality, and personal preference of color temperature. As for rooms having multiple lights, that is more of a trend. I've also added a lot more lights to my house, but that's not because incandescents are brighter (i've still got a lot of rooms running only incandescents I stock piled), it's because I want more light, and no longer have to worry about burning a ton of extra power see properly. Also something to keep in mind is that a lot of LEDs are actually not driven to their maximum potential because it's too bright for most people's preferences. Some have settings, but there are a few different flat panel fixtures that I've had to turn down because they were blindingly bright at full power.
@@lazygazzzer Wait, you're judging LED bulbs because a store that wants to sell you more lamps and bulbs told you to buy more lamps and bulbs? One LED bulb replaces one incandescent bulb just fine. Use your eyes and your brain instead of letting a company that's only trying to sell you more crap tell you what to think.
@@mjc0961 Well mister, I am currently sitting in a room in a fairly modern flat and it has three light fittings hanging from the ceiling. I will use my eyes and I will use my brain as you suggest. Two of the LED bulbs are barely putting out any light at all. They are no better than what you'd get from a candle. The other lamp has a fairly new LED bulb in it , replaced by myself about two weeks ago. That one is nice and bright. But it is no different from the other two as it came from the same pack of replacement bulbs. The thing is, in a few weeks time it will start getting dim like the other two and will probably continue like that for the remaining 80% of it's life cycle. And furthermore, I can make up my own mind about these things and don't need you to tell me that I can be swayed by some stupid shop. LED lights are crap and I would prefer Incandescent or halogen bulbs any time - but I can't get them because of some stupid ban on sales.
That looks like it could be a zinc casting rather than aluminum. Yeah, zinc alloys are much less efficient for heatsink material, but they mold into complex shapes really well and cost way less than the same casting in aluminum. It was soft enough to gouge deeply from your screwdriver tip, but all that leverage didn't stove in the metal surrounding it at all (like the same thickness aluminum probably would). I've seen it before in other LED lights: the zinc is much better than no metal heat sink, and explain better why that bulb was oddly heavy. A large, thin sheet of aluminum like you found in that other bulb is arguably worse, made so thin to save money the heat travels poorly to its outer edges.
I agree. Zinc is cheap partly because of its very low melting point, much less heat required to cast it. The greater mass means a higher heat capacity, and it's larger, so more area to shed the heat from.
That shaky panichands pause and then double hand flip 11:29 after the explosive disassembly -- SO RELATABLE LOL. Because you KNOW there's that little window where you could be slashed to the bone and not feel anything...
It had me on the edge of my seat, like AVE offloading that clapped out mill from the little trailer. Knife with the blade out, prying with a screwdriver right over the easily scratched screen of the multimeter, and his booger hooks all waiting for a jab or cut.
I squirmed when I saw him pulling at that plastic. I always wear gloves when doing that kind of disassembly. I occasionally hurt myself wrenching on my vehicles where I can't where gloves, and sometimes look around seeing blood on the tools and checking closely to see where it came from.
It's not always the LED's that fail. You could make the product modular so that the capacitors are replaceable as well as the LED's. Ideally more consumers would be confident in using a soldering iron and buying replacement parts from a shop on the high street. We do at least have separate drivers which can be replaced, but the difference between constant current and constant voltage is likely to remain esoteric for ever.
As a plasma fanatic I just stick to fluorescent lamps. Most LEDs are boring for me. Filament style is OK but most other types are as ugly as the average mother-in-law.
They weren't wrong about the LEDs having a long life, but they didn't say anything about those damn driver circuits did they? (There is one tiny upside, if willing to take the time it's probably a good source for component harvesting.) One last note, if your LEDs consistently have a short life - you should do some checks on the power coming out of the wall. It's likely you have a lot of noise or other waveform issues and need to voice complaints to the power company. Whatever it's doing to fry LEDs, it's also doing to all your other electronics.
As a plasma fanatic I just stick to fluorescent lamps. Most LEDs are boring for me. Filament style is OK but most other types are as ugly as the average mother-in-law.
Dear friend Doubtful Technician, I strongly suggest wearing anti-cut gloves n eye protection as I ONCE suffered accidents cut myself opening the bulbs. These anti cut gloves really work. Love ur videos.
I’m used to a long explanation to answer question I wouldn’t know how to ask. Colour me tickled that someone actually answered a question I have silently asked myself 1000 times! Thanks for this. Subscribing!!
The whole concept of LED lighting for home use is flawed. Every frackin' bulb has to have electronics inside since all they'te thinking about is backward compatibility. When halogen lighting became popular, the conversion to low voltage was done outside the lamp, like it should. Replacing a popped bulb only meant replacing the actual lamp. Way cheaper and 100 times more environment friendly. I scavenge the local street lighting company once a week and even the retrofits for street lighting have this "all in one" approach. Many broken lamps just have the electronics fail prematurely because of getting too hot, bad components and moisture getting in. Newly built houses shoud have a separate circuit for low voltage lighting so all the lamp needs to contain are LED's and resistors.
If you start requiring a low voltage circuit in houses, you can expect that the power supplies that get installed will be very unreliable. Landlord's specials. And replacing those every 2 or 3 years, can be just as expensive as swapping out a 2 euro LED bulb, because the power supply will be a "Special Appliance" that is sold at a premium, or is located in such a place that your average homeowner gets unsure about replacing it themselves. Your idea can absolutely work, though with switching regulators in the LED bulbs instead of resistors. Switching regulators can deal with some voltage drop over the wiring ensuring that the brightness of all LED lamps will be equal, and they will run a whole lot cooler than a resistor driven LED bulb, therefore increasing life span of the LED phosphors. Cost wise it does not matter. Those driver chips and some associated components get you to maybe 45 cents in total, wholesale. I do not exactly know if you save a lot on heat production by running a switcher on low voltage rather than high voltage. But at least you can get rid of the bridge rectifier and filter capacitor, both of which are not uncommon to fail. I think one of the biggest benefits is that you can make the lamp housing out of metal, and use it as a big heat sink, safely. Theoretically you can do it too on mains voltage, but you need an isolation layer that thermally conducts. But in the end, what counts is production cost, and even in the above scenario, corporations only strive for biggest profits with the lowest quality level the market still tolerates. They are not making those lamps for the good of the people, but only for the good of the shareholders.
@@mfbfreak _> "Landlord's specials"_ lol, I can attest to that. Rented an apartment a year ago or so. Low voltage lighting circuits throughout (bathrooms, kitchen, etc). Guess what failed first, two times in a row? I was damn glad I made an agreement that any failures within the first month were landlord's problem.
I think the easiest and best option would be to have the electronics in the fixture, and have a variety of standardized LED arrays you can pop into them. (kind of like florescent fixtures)
@@mfbfreak the problem there is what voltage is the DC? Different LED lights require different raw DC voltage. So your house DC supply would have to be the highest necessary value or you would need DC/DC up converters to step it up for the larger lights. You still need either inefficient and heat generating/sensitive dropping/limitting resisters or DC/DC down converters (more efficient & less heat). So you probably do gain some reliability at the lights but you have now created a single point failure at the house lighting circuit supply. If that goes, then you loose all your lighting. You may also introduce more arching at the light switches. Separate lower voltage lines for switches with relays in the fixtures? Not necessarily a bad idea but would really require some serious design and would have to come from either the government or an open-source industry consortium.
Thank you for your comedic entertainment while sparing me the work of ripping these components apart myself. I thoroughly enjoyed your mixture of light hearted, self deprecating humor paired with very insightful troubleshooting demonstrations. I wondered myself why these stupid LEDs don't hold up and was about to rip them apart to give them a shakedown. You beat me to it, and I am grateful for it.
This was a fun video to watch! I like your use of tools to test things out -- you know your stuff! 👍 Thanks for doing up this video. Your frankness and honest human mistake stuff is great! 😂 Keep up the good work!🎉
Thanks for making video. I knew I wasn't crazy with all my LED Bulbs blowing out the same or sooner than my old school bulbs. Wish they built the electronics in a way that would make them replaceable as the LED's are fine. Thanks again.
That bulb where you exposed the inner workings at the 11:45 mark, on aircraft we call those TR (transformer/rectifier) units, to convert 115V/400 Hz AC to 28 VDC. Of course, they're a LOT bigger, heavier, and last a LOT longer despite the relatively large amount of DC current they output because they were built to high standards and cost crazy money. But, it's an aircraft and you can't just swap one out when you're at altitude. There are multiple units for redundancy and safety, which can autoswap onto the bus and hold a higher load for a while to get the aircraft to its destination.
Not a big deal. When I was a youngster (under 30) I electrocuted myself many a time.... Getting hit by a 240 circuit was fun. How did I get way over here?
“Like feeding a toddler spaghetti by candlelight” sounds like the analogy. “How’s the car repair going?” “Like feeding a toddler spaghetti by candlelight.”
I LOVE incandescent. LEDs consistently give me headaches (migranes). Bad ones. Even the low light. Also, LOVE this channel! You're like an ELI5 version of Big Clive with their own brand of humor! [**Hugs.**] I am subbing right away!
I have old ecosmart LED bulbs in the hallway that have been working for over a decade. A couple of the bulbs have 1 of 5 LEDs burnt out, but they're still plenty bright. Meanwhile, one of my newer ecosmart bulbs died in just a few years. A capacitor blew its load, there was electrolyte all over inside of the bulb. At least it didn't fail catastrophically, unlike the ancient CFL in my garage, in which the electronics melted its casing. That bulb was probably 20-25 years old, and it had U-tubes instead of the spiral tubes found in later CFLs. It produced very pink light when it worked!
As a plasma fanatic I just stick to fluorescent lamps. Most LEDs are boring for me. Filament style is OK but most other types are as ugly as the average mother-in-law.
You need to buy quality bulbs from reliable company. I’m a property manager. I haven’t had to change a single one of the dozens and dozens I’ve put in. But I only buy Phillips bulbs.
Thank you for the insightful video. I've been repairing led lightstuffs here an there, and I agree that most of them fails because their power supplies failed. Luckily with the proliferation of tech gadgets I've amassed quite a collection of dc adapters with outputs anywhere from 1.9V to 24V, and with them I can usually clip off the supply and just soldered a dc socket. Power supply far away from heat generating component = long life. Second type of failure is the other way around, where they cut costs of the led silicons themselves by using fewer of them and driving them to the edge of oblivion. These usually failed by dimming. I really looked forward to a future where residential solar power is so ubiquitous that HVDC gained a standard in households, something like 48V or 50Vdc. Then all new light installations can simply use buck circuits.
Get commercial rated bulbs from a known vendor. Phillips master series or similar. They last a very long time. I think people don't remember how often we did in fact replace regular light bulbs. I haven't replaced any led bulbs in my house in 3 years or so. The ones that needed replacing were cheap crap not actually much more than an incandescent. With the incandescents you'd replace one somewhere every month or so.
Every month? You must leave them on all the time. For the living room, I think I replaced them every 6 months to 1 year. Because they are rated for 1000 h, which means 1000 h / 5 h per night = 200 days. Other locations probably were every 2 y. We usually use 60 W bulbs and I still have some.
I've found that newer LED bulb designs produce a lot less heat, and so far seem to be lasting longer. It's also worth noting it depends on what fixture you put it in. As some fixtures can dissipate the heat well, and some (nipple/boob cheap lamp fixtures) have poor to no heat venting. For incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs this was fine and did not accelerate their death (except for some CFLs), but boy does it ever accelerate the death of LED bulbs! (if they get hot enough). So kinda wish you had covered the fixtures each were used in more closely, as this detail I'd say is very important.
This is exactly the problem. Incandescent bulbs, CFLs and LEDs all have different constraints for long life, but end users rarely care or even know about them. For CFLs, short on/off cycles are a death sentence. For LEDs it is poor heat dissipation more than anything else.
The packaging on some cheap LED bulbs will tell you not to use in enclosed fixtures. I had a light fixture that was killing LED bulbs in less than a year and found this to be the issue. Spent a bit more on some better LEDs approved for use in enclosed fixtures and they have been lasting much longer.
I changed all our lighting to LED when moving into our present house in 2016 ... so 8 years ago. We have a lot of bulbs of many different sizes and types. So far the only failure has been an LED strip light in the garage. We are undoubtedly doing better than the incandescent or compact fluorescent types.
@@whyme5024 That is not such a issue where I leave. Since I have to run heating for 8 month in a year, incadenscent heat is not lost during that time, it just helps house heating. Actually I have a pair of BR30 over my head in the office, and I like them warm over my head for those 8 month, so I switch them to incandescent for winter, and back to LED for summer. Of course there is no point running incandescents outside, or a cold storage room, or really garage.
@@soundspark Isn't every experience at Orange Store bad? I've also had universally bad experiences at Blue Store. They both buy the cheapest possible Chinese trash and fill their entire store with it and make every customer walk two miles to find the tiniest component.
Solution is to install a big gq transformer for every light switch that brings down to 12v and use 12V LEDs. They last forever then, mine has lasted more than 7 years so far. Transformer can't be to far from LEDs though.
I've been tossing cheap LED bulbs in the garbage not because they *fail* but because they start flickering. Waveform Lighting makes some nice flicker free bulbs, but they're expensive. Trying out some Phillips 'flicker free EyeComfort technology' bulbs in the kitchen, so far so good. Still running Sylvania incandescent floods in my living room ceiling cans, that light quality is unmatched by LED.
Many years ago, home depot use to sell Cree LED Bulbs with lofty claims of longevity. I would save my receipts for the challenge, and everytime they burn out, I would bring it back for warranty claim. Ha!
Cree is a legit brand. Today with rampant counterfeiting there's no way you can know what you're really getting unless you pull it off an assembly line yourself. I wouldn't put it past the Home Depot to be selling "Cree" bulbs made somewhere other than Cree in China. Home Depot is not on Cree's list of authorized distributors.
Specifically eco smart, been tearing them down for years now when they die and every iteration I notice they use less and less materials and push they led’s harder and they usually fail in less than two years by either flickering for no reason at random or just flat out not turning on
@@kmschwem yeah, I bought a crap ton of Phillips led bulbs when they all went clearance at the Home Depot I work at, all work perfectly other than their odd ball 250w equivalent led bulbs that they have with the soft glow feature, had two of them just randomly fail a little after 6 months of maybe 5-10 minutes of use a day (basement lighting) no flicker no nothing, juts flat out wouldn’t turn on but all the the led filament stuff is excellent so far
Thank you for truly answering a question that I have wondered about for years. I could never understand how something supposed to last many years - doesn't.
Like you said at the end of the video, if you treat the LEDs well it can last a lifetime. Did you know that LEDs degrade over time due stress by over powering the LEDs? Mostly not a problem of your eyesight when you discover you can't read something, it is just degradation of the LEDs. Most manufacturers include 50% degradation as still usable in the warranty specification. Second, we always talk about LED but it is actually a LED package, there are mostly more than one LEDs inside a package. I have seen a tiny package with 12 LEDs inside. That is why the LED package can get so bright and hot because they are packed so close together, it is almost impossible to dissipate all of the heat especially when overdriven. Inside a closed enclosure, it is even worse. That is why the bulbs fail sooner, heat is the enemy of all kind of electronics. What I did with most of my LED lighting is to reduce the current, remove the (excessive) heat. This really helps. Reducing the current effects the amount of light it can produce a little but it is worth to do so because there is a less heat, low degradation, longer lifetime and lower power consumption. That is a win!
I have had *and have* incandescent bulbs that last decades. At least 4 for some of my older lamps. I tried fluorescent bulbs when they came out a decade or two ago. I bought a Chinese made box of them at Best Buy on sale one day. Installed one by one I watched them stop working over the course of a year. I just swapped them out from the box at first. Then the show stopper. I walked into a room and turned on the overhead light and was met with immediate sputtering, and most worrying, actual smoke and small red sparks falling, coming from the base of the bulb. That ended the life span of fluorescent bulbs from Chine in my house. About a year ago, due primarily to my running out of stored incandescent bulbs I began to use LED bulbs. I have yet to have one last 6 months. I have one in a hall that works sometimes. Luckily it isn't the only light in that hallway. Apparently whenever an alien spacecraft enters or departs our atmosphere it turns on or off. There is no discernible regular interval between turning on and off. Sometimes it turns off for a half hour, sometimes for just 4 or 6 minutes, sometimes for 2 or 3 hours. It is the only LED on that circuit so whatever is happening is either internal to the bulb, or some kind of interference caused by alien space ships crossing the Van Allen Radiation belt or Chinese experimental firing of their Ion cannon. Luckily at an auction I was able to pick up some more incandescent bulbs. My intention is to wait another decade (or two) before again trying LED technology as a cure for darkness. It is pretty obvious here that at the current stage of development any talk about LED lights saving the consumer money is just scammer talk (aka BS) once the cost replacing failed LED light bulbs is factored in. Maybe in a decade there will be reliability improvements, but as a consumer, I will wait and see.
An easy way to remember the resistor color code: Bad boys R our young girls but Violet gives willingly. That's the way I learned it 40 years ago and it stuck.
I learned that from my older brother who was in electronics too about that time but was uncomfortable with the R word he used(which I noticed you didn't mention) .I substituted that R word with the socially acceptable Jamaican slang "Rate" which means to Revere.
In HS freshman electronics shop, the teacher taught us the ‘official' mnemonic for the color code (Big Boys Race Our Young Girls But Violet Generally Wins), then suggested that we ask the juniors to tell us the 'other' version. We all of course used the ‘other' one
Possibly the best electronics video I've ever watched. He's great. I +thought+ the electronics were the parts that failed, and so it turns out to be. Thank you for this, and your sense of humor.
I just clicked on this video so I could comment that I own all Philips Hue LED lights (the ones that change colors as you can get ones that do not), and I have never had one fail on me! The oldest two Hue lights I have are about to be 10 years old and still going strong. I got them in 2015 when I moved into my current apartment, that is how I remember when I got them. Maybe you mentioned this in your video, which I will watch eventually, but what brand you buy definitely matters in how long LED lights last! So Philips Hue, or Philips Master Series and you will be good for well over a decade, making them well worth the money!
I’ve lived in this house now 20 years. The incandescent bulbs in my kitchen and two bathrooms at least that old, never changed. Same for the halogens in dining and living room.
If you want some decent quality LEDs at reasonable prices I recommend taking a look at sylvania bulbs. I don't trust most no-name brands for home lighting. I have had some bad experience with Feit bulbs and I have a disdain for Philips as they took away the ability to have smart bulbs work locally and not have to create an account or send data to the cloud.
I've had good luck with the "house" brands at certain dedicated online bulb stores - so far they've lasted infinitely longer (in that NONE have failed yet) than anything from the box stores or the online scammy river store.. Compared to the ones from the box stores, some of which failed within 5 hours of use
Makes me upset that my local Lowes and Walmart won't stock incandescent bulbs unless it a oven or microwave bulb. We're all forced to buy garbage marked as a good products.
But even the worst quality led bulb is better than the best quality incandescent bulb. Like, by far. Wastes 10x more power for the same lumens. LEDs cost about the same and generate basically no heat. Also, no incandescent bulb ever, lasted more than 2 years, unless it was one of those super dim ones like 20w or less. Source: Me, I am from the 20th century. Back in the day replacing light bulbs was a monthly task around the house. Especially super bright ones like 200w bulbs didn't last at all.
@Wes12940 i have repurposed these types of led boards, found a few that fall in line with my cordless tool batteries along with buck converters, and made outdoor security lighting.
@@ukaszsmoa8416 Running LEDs off house current just doesn't work well. There's no way around the voltage difference. LEDs really don't like high voltage AC. The parts capable of doing the conversion don't like living next to LEDs. That goes for good, bad and indifferent qualities.
I bought a bunch of LEDs around 10 years ago. Half of them crapped out within a year and the others are still going strong. The ones going strong probably paid for the others by now.
As long as they're cheap enough, it's probably not worth the cost of fixing a failed LED bulb. But this kind of work can show which bulbs are better than the others. You've also made me realize how much more tech is involved in LED bulbs than incandescent bulbs.
Super enjoyable stuff! FYI, it's the high voltage electrolytic capacitors that go bad first. You need ESR meter to detect the problem. A capacitance meter will often show proper capacity while the ESR is too high for the capacitor to function.
Feit and Phillips have worked very well for me. Haven't replaced one yet and some are well over 10 years old. Every Cree bulb I've owned has failed relatively quickly.
I purchased a pack of 6 LED bulbs branded as KOR on Amazon, in 2022 and all of them that are in use today still work fine. Tho I guess the quality of these really does vary a lot. I've been a bit concerned about the longevity of them having seen videos of bulbs that have failed early, but so far my experience seems to be quite good. They are rated for 15000 hours of life and I've calculated that as being roughly 2 years of being on 24/7 I have a bulb in a lamp I use in my bedroom which often gets left on for many hours a day sometimes overnight, and its still working today, tho it might have dimmed a bit, but I haven't compared it against a brand new bulb. I personally can be happy with a 5 year lifespan for LED bulbs as I've been using those halogen incandescent before and those only seem to last about 7 months in my experience.
As a contractor, I have installed dozens of outdoor LED motion Sensing flood lights. 3/4 of them have been 120 VAC, and 1/4 of them Solar powered. ALL of the 120 VAC units have failed within 13-15 months of installation, all from the power supply failures of various kinds (just past the warranty expiration). I did post-mortems on all of them and the LED's are all working fine. All of the Solar Powered units are still working, two of them for over 7 years on the same cheap battery. Yeah, the complexity of the conversion electronics have been the downfall on each of the AC units.
You had me laughing and chuckling throughout. It's like I'm watching an EE version of This Old Tony. Or a younger and less jaded AvE! Either way, subscribed and will go through your catalog of vidjeos. Also, you missed a golden opportunity to engage your safety squints. But hilarious, nonetheless. I think you'll do well on YT. You have the three required elements of a successful channel. Entertaining, Genuine, and Informative. Every successful channel has those three qualities (IMO) FINALLY, I'm glad you're fighting the good fight against Big LED!! LOL.
I was an electrical project manager for large construction firm for many many years. Back when LEDs first started coming out for commercial use, since we would buy millions of dollars of lighting , asked if we'd like to try some of the new fangled LED fixtures just starting to be produced, which I did. As usual we got the 120,000 hours of guaranteed life of the LEDs with them failing quite regularly. Talking to the manufacturer's engineers I was informed that the guarantee only applied to the LED only and not the drivers that are needed to make the LEDs function. Even today, trying to get them to replace fixtures that fail, you will still get the same thing, "The LEDs are fine, but the driver has failed and we don't warrantee drivers."
Thank you for this, most illuminating, ahem. This has been bugging me for a while, and I'm getting cynical about whether LEDs offer much environmental advantage if you have to throw them away every few months. Here in the UK we have nominal 240v AC. However the voltage that I receive is in fact usually 250v and sometimes more. Do you think that this might be affecting the lifespan of the bulbs? Also, do you think that more expensive bulbs might last longer?
For this sort of work I made a pair of probes using sewing needles and BIC biro tubes. Gives you very sharp points than can easily punch through crap, and into the metal enough so they never slip. The biro tubes provide strong well insulated probe 'handles'.
I bought my house almost 9 years ago. I did heavy research and bought cree bulbs and replaced every existing bulb in the house. Some of those have been replaced with RGB smart bulbs at various points. Not one has failed. Total number of bulbs, 17 recessed fixtures, 8 lamps, 4 ceiling fixtures, several closet and basement lights, and probably some I am forgetting.
As someone that used to work in the electronics field but now in HVAC I can see how the LEDs don't last as long as stated on packaging. You hit both points with manufacturing practices of penny pinching and the heat issue. I see in my building I live in they have many fixtures that are designed for incandescent bulbs to be installed and they now have residing in them the imposter LEDs. Because of the construction of the fixtures for the heat production of incandescent bulbs, they have insulation in between the bulb housing and the building drywall. That traps the heat inside the fixture along with the glass diffuser. All of that means the bulbs literally cook themselves to death. The second point to make here is that most of the life expectancy of bulbs is based on an expected time the bulb will be lit in a day. Generally they go with 6 hours a day (look at the packaging to see what they base it off of for an idea). The manufacturing is always going to bite you in the end. With parts being barely held on with the solder and the heat they will be seeing, you can expect a shorter life. I generally get fixtures that are dimming acceptable and use a dimmer to drive them at a lower power and therefor the fixture lasts longer. Yes I get the whole LED fixture instead of the screw in bulbs for most of my fixtures. The only one that still has an Edison base is the ceiling fan fixture.
Well, you explained why these bulbs not only fail early but often flicker incessantly like they're having a seizure while they're on. Haven't been able to figure this out since I started using them in recessed lighting fixtures in my kitchen...
I have done a few LED bulb autopsies as well. The older ones with switch mode don't have capacitors rated to last the claimed lifetime given the temperature inside the bulb. A capacitor lifetime is rated at its max temperature and voltage and that is not as long the bulb lifetime, so it needs to have a voltage and or temperature rating way over what it experiences to get the lifetime required. I also had one that used the wrong sort of silicone glue for electronics. It has to be a special type that doesn't emit acid when it cures. The PCB traces were corroded away. The more modern linear regulators get too hot when the mains voltage is towards the top of its spec. I have seen some that use heatsink compound to connect the chip on the PCB to the metal bulb base. Heatsink compound is designed to fill microscopic surface defects, not bridge large gaps.
"Due to light sensor I installed myself it is on for 24h a day" )
The funny thing is that probably that extends the life of the incandescent lamp, as there is no thermal cycle stress 😂
Photocell sensors are pos nowadays, his was probably doa. First one lasted 13 years, replacements lasted 2-3 years nowadays. I bypassed it and changed to a wifi switch.
@@arthurdefreitaseprecht2648Nor probably. The record bulbs are kept always on. Technically they'll keep working.
I had a good chuckle that very moment :D
I laughed too hard at this!
It takes a special kind of charisma to make me watch a video about light bulbs for 16.5 minutes
Faulty LED bulbs is a big topic. They don't seem to last anywhere near what's being claimed. So there's a lot of videos about autopsying bulbs and repairing them and what have you.
Let me interest you in Technology Connections' video on a toaster...
I've watched it twice.
@copernicofelinis a coworker referred me to technology connections, i never thought I'd be so interested in such videos, however like you said, I watch them over and over
@@copernicofelinis , I was looking for this reply! Love Doubtful and Technology Connections, probably my two favourite channels at this point.
@@copernicofelinis dont forget the three videos about the dishwashers (they are kinda the same tho). i watched all of them and i dont even have i dishwasher lol
my work let me take apart the 480v LEDs they got for their warehouse after they died. The bulbs claimed a 10-year life but died after 2-4 years. When I got them apart, I found the capacitors to be the issue. Checking their datasheet, I found that they were only guaranteed for 2 years of life. How can a company claim a lifetime 5 times longer than the lifetime of their parts? (and no, the capacitors were not oversized or underpowered in any way)
MTBF is heavily depending on the environment temperature. If the manufacturer adding sufficient active cooling equipment such as heat-pipe and long lasting cool fan, the life span should be increased accordingly; of course, so does the price tag.
Everything seems to have a disingenuous nature now, it`s like for the sake of saving one penny per unit ie a galvanised bolt vs stainless steel so as to render a greater profit still undermines the principles of showing pride in ones handy work.
I have seen that claim being made on operating time, not actual past time. Then there will be an assumption on the time of operation per day.
Electrolytic capacitors can be up-rated by about a factor of 2 for every 10C they are below nominal max operating temp.
(note: this has to include internal heating from ripple current).
That's why a 20000h 85C and a 5000h 105C rated capacitor offer pretty much the same effective lifetime at sane operating conditions.
At least Nippon Chemicon and Panasonic have appnotes explaining this in detail.
@@nzcymThat's true for the LED chip where the device is a semiconductor and the length of its life is strongly dependent on operating temperature.
That isn't the case, generally for capacitors.
The 25,000 hour typical life that is quoted for LED lights is typically the life time of the LED chips and is stated on the data sheet by the manufacturer of the LED chips. But this is the life time of the chip if the LED operating temperature is kept within the limits indicated by the LED chip manufacturer.
Then the light bulb manufacturers put the chips on to a board and put into a bulb, then the bulb is placed into a confined space into a luminare without sufficient cooling and that 25,000 hour life drops significantly.
When you look at the cooling features on an LED bulb that conforms to a standard replaceable bulb type, with bayonet or Edison screw thread, they typically just have a few cooling fins along the body of the bulb. It's a pathetic amount of cooling.
Why would the industry want to fix that? Bulbs failing results in repeat business.
i just realised that you have hands like a 50 year old but sound like someone that is 16
@@mikemondano3624 what
Whoa, avg(50,16)=33, and he said he was 7 years from being 40, meaning he's 33. You might be onto something.
I disagree, the hands don't seem that old.
American Werewolf In London......I see a bad moon rising🤣
That's because he is a Sparks/Techy - fiddling with wires, tools and getting minor electrocutions every day will do that to your hands.
As a research chemist working on OLEDs, it pains me to know how many chemists and physicists worked hard on making the LEDs last for decades only for greedy companies to use cheap components and manufacturing techniques, causing the LEDs to fail after fractions of their useful life.
Well, even with that shortcuts prices of LED are not that cheap (and seems started to rise). Nobody is interested to pay $10 for a bulb.
My biggest complaint about these LED bulbs is that they cram so many components into a completely un-repairable sealed package. If I could actually fix just the parts that burned out it would be a way better deal. But by the time I open them enough to find the failed part it's destroyed. A room-wide or house-wide efficient AC to DC converter and then just DC LED fixtures would be a much more tenable solution, but people don't want to deal with that.
Because it's just another scam like CFL's were, are, whatever.
Ive been disassembling everything imaginable for over 50 years and its always the same thing with cheaply made crap that was never designed to be repaired . Its made that way to meet a price point. But it never stops me from having a look inside anyway!!
I had some small compact 60s with a spherical plastic cover and couple of them stopped working early, but when i cracked the glue and covers off, two began working again. Lol
And they are way brighter w/o the opaque white cover, so i use them in my bench "up close" lamps as they make very bright light that makes details of things more pronounced. I work on restoring clocks and use magnifiers to see tiny details, so the more intense of clarity the light, the better.
Cram all the components into a tiny sealed space and see how long the capacitors survive.
@@anthonyiannone7618Planned obselescence...so the companies can sell enough to not go bankrupt because they make things that last so long that nobody buys their products any more.
UA-cam is definitely listening to me, I was talking about these failing LEDs last night at like 11 PM, and then this shows up first thing in the morning
It's worse. Once you use youtube and google heavily for years, they can simulate what you're thinking. Basically mind reading at this point. You do have to give them fresh data every day for it to happen though.
It's the generative AI !
It’s not utube, it’s your phone, and Alexa or google. Then they feed the info to utube for money.
@@Hclann1 you sweet summer child.
@@Hclann1 Windows too. I start playing OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon) which is fully open-source with no commercial connections, and UA-cam starts offering me more train and strategy game content. It's creepy.
The worst are products with built in LEDs lights that are not replaceable. (stovetop cover, bathroom lights, non-replaceable track lighting)
As a plasma fanatic I just stick to fluorescent lamps. Most LEDs are boring for me. Filament style is OK but most other types are as ugly as the average mother-in-law.
No the worst part is they are not recyclable. Except maybe a household electronics event. That's where I take mine.
Absolutely.
I agree in principle that they shouldn't be made... but the simple solution is to learn how to take things apart and repair them, or shop more carefully.
@@mernokimuvek Works in colder climate as heat lamp. Sucks when you are living in equatorial/tropical climate.
Couldn't agree more ..I was hooked to watch to the end ...great guy .love these type of informative videos.
After 27 years as an electronics tech (now retired) this was somewhat entertaining.
That B&K cap checker made me all nostalgic.
Ditto. I still have my B&K tube tester and occasionally use it to troubleshoot friends audio tube amps.
Same here. That B&K test gear brings back memories. Even had there curve tracer!
It's like This Old Tony and Big Clive had a baby.
And non-racist, non-antivax AvE
@@drcpaintball How many boosters have you gotten?
🤣🤣
@@chrimony Don't get your flu shots either, bub?
He should try some of those LED's Big Clive was looking at from Kuwait.
The LED's in those are run at a much lower power than rated. I would say as they run cooler they would be lasting longer.
The one in my attic failed because I bashed it with my head.
That one got me pretty good especially since I just smashed by damn kitchen light while cleaning rifles
Why did you do that? I'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer but even I know that's usually not a good idea. lol
@@michaelrunnels7660 The very well designed hanging lights sit about 3 feet off a low table so picking things up off the table is a risk haha
@@michaelrunnels7660 n My attic crawl space is only about 2 feet high and bashing the light with my head just seemed like the reasonable thing to do as I was getting to the top of the ladder from downstairs to reach for some stuff.
@@ThatBoomerDude56 Yup. Just like the cowboy out on the range when, seeing a patch of cactus, took off all his clothes and jumped in the cactus. After he ran screaming from the cactus patch his partner who was with him asked "What the heck did you do that for?" He answered "Seemed like a good idea at the time!"
One thing about the incandescent bulb in your one lamp, that bulb has survived for so many years because it's been turned on and left on. The biggest thing that will kill that type of bulb is power cycling. It stresses the filament every time you cycle it on and off, so if it's turned on and off enough times it WILL die. Though if it's left in a place like what you were showing where it was able to be left on and never change its state of being on or off then the stresses on it are limited.
It saves the bulb a lot of stress if you have a soft-start circuit.
@@TheExileFoxyes, bulbs with dimming circuit survives a long time
True. Tungsten has a positive temperature coefficient, so the resistance is lower when cold. When switched on, if the AC cycle is near or at the peak voltage, 325 Volts here in the UK, then because the filament is cold, and has a lower resistance, the peak current blows the filament and makes that characteristic ''chink'' sound when it does.
As an electronics geek, I like to call incandescent lamps, directly heated monodes. 😊
The incandescent floods in my kitchen are original from when the house was built in 1994. They are 130v bulbs instead of the more common 120v, and they have always been on a dimmer switch where the light has to be dimmed up to full power. When tungsten filaments are never stressed, they last forever.
You are correct. I saw a slo mo video years ago that showed a clear light bulb filament being violently whipped around in the first few alternations of current flow. On that basis, DC would seem to be gentler upon startup due to a single filament movement with the onset of current flow instead of the multiple alternations of AC current. Not that it's practical to do so, but still interesting.
Your commentary is like what runs through my head as someone with a bachelor's in electrical engineering where I spent precisely 0 days doing EE as a career. 30 years later I can easily impress people with my skill at fixing electronics using the most basic EE knowledge. Thanks to bad Chinese engineers, what breaks are usually the obvious components.
Your method of disassembly is right up my alley. The only thing different is I also use tin snips and a hammer.
Why do they fail (prematurely compared to expectations) ?
It’s simple. Most LED bulbs are severely price constrained. By using fewer LEDs it’s cheaper to make but to get a competitive light output those LEDs needs to be driven to the edge of their existence. So they get hot, and either burn themselves out or the heat kills adjacent components.
The thing is, we cannot realistically complain about planned obsolescence while at the same time demanding ever cheaper consumer electronics. Good quality LED bulbs do exist but they typically cost around 5 times more than the cheapest ones. And the good ones do last long.
Incandescent bulbs went through a similar phase, for a while one could buy incredibly cheap horrendously badly made bulbs that would sometimes break on the trip home. But when well made, they too can last decades. I have some incandescent lightbulbs still in use since the late 80’s.
Also, fight me on this but nothing beats the colour rendering of a good incandescent lightbulb.
The 200W versions I have are pretty decent at being subtle space heaters too. (And especially effective at melting modern plastic light fixtures 😅)
The best hack* for cheap LED bulbs is to trim the current sensing resistors to run the bulb at a lower wattage / current. Aim for around 10mA per LED and they should live a long happy life.
*Credit to BigClive for this one. See his channel for more details / how to.
There's no need to fight you on the color rendering index. Incandescent is obviously best (100 CRI and good R9) because it's just a black body radiator.
LED's however can be good. You just need to pay for it.
There are many options with 90+ CRI or 95+ CRI or even 98+ CRI. The CRI rating however is problematic.
The CRI rating only looks at the R1 through R8 colors which are pale colors. Previously mentioned R9 is a deeper red. And if a light has a poor R9 color rendition, skin colors for example look ghastly.
The extended CRI looks at R9-R14 colors as well but CRI Ra value is based on R1-R8 performance.
There is IES TM-30-18 as well and CQS etc. but this needs wider industry support/push and we'd need consumers and professionals to ask for better lighting.
It's just unfortunate that the vast majority of people don't care so we get sub par products.
Also most people shove any bulb into an enclosed fixture. I need to tear one of those apart
LEDs, even cheap ones, don't usually fail on their own. In most cases the issue with this type of lamps is a small (or non-existent) heatsink or a cheap power supply. Just look at third lamp - it has everything it needs, and it serves for years. the other ones may serve a year or two before dropping brightness and eventually failing.
LEDs are also better because you can purchase ones with high CRI and almost any color temperature you want, even the one of incandescent lightbulbs. But why would you.
10mA per LED is pretty low. Even ancient LEDS could tolerate more current than that. I would think double that is still within the realm of reason. A modern blue LED is more along the lines of 30 mA rated. It'll light up at 10 mA but it's not going to be particularly bright. Another thing you can do is vent the bulbs. If you can reduce the heat you will increase the life. Every 10 degrees doubles the life. Heat is that significant a factor. They should stop trying to make light bulbs like light bulbs. Come up with a design that manages the heat better. Clearly manufacturers don't care and are just interested in selling product. They should make lamps with built in PSUs. Maybe the Edison screw base isn't the way to fly today? The packaging is all wrong. Stuffing LEDs into a housing designed for incandescent filament is just dumb.
@@1pcfred Well, that depends on the LED. I guess better suggestion would be to look at the current they're running the LED's at and then perhaps halving that or something.
In a previous comment I hinted at the LED I/Vf curve. As the current increases, the forward voltage increases as well. LED power does not increase linearly.
Similarly, as you increase the LED current, the light output does not increase linearly.
Just as a simple example, manufacturer might run 50% more current through the LED's, only to gain let's say 25% more light output.
But the power consumed will increase by more than 50%!
So, if you reduce the current, the drive circuit will have much easier time as the power load decreases more than the current or the light output does and the LED's as well will be much happier.
Obviously the 2835 or whatever size LED's are used in bulbs have smaller differences than the above rather extreme examples but the principle applies.
Just for reference, I looked up LM281B LED specifications and it's rated for 150mA at 57-61lm. So you'd need about 13-14 of these for an 800lm bulb.
Looking at the Vf curve, and guesstimating, at 150mA the forward voltage is roughly 3.15V.
Halving the current to 75mA, the forward voltage drops to, let's say 2.95V.
While the luminous flux drops from 100% to, I don't know, let's say 58%.
Current drops from 100% to 50%, power drops to 47% and luminous flux drops to 58%.
See what I mean?
But this is just going from the rated current (150mA) downwards. The max current on that specific LED is just 160mA.
There are other LED's which have a much wider range between the rated current and the max current.
If you do the same calculation for an LED that's driven hard vs driven at the rated current, the difference is only going to increase.
In my experience, most incandescents that were used on a daily basis lasted around a year. CFLs were somewhat better, but I've rarely had to replace LEDs, rare enough that when one does stop working, I've got to hunt to see if I have a replacement for it
I had incandescents at my old house last as long as 12 years on fade-in dimmer switches. None of the LED bulbs that came with my new 2020 house lasted more than 3 years. Huge box of e-waste now the landfill (we don't have a recycling center within 70 miles of my area).
@@JSMCPN Are you sure your LEDs are dimmer-compatible?
There are also special dimmer switches for LEDs. I've found that even if the bulb says dimmable, it will still flicker on a normal dimmer switch.
@@JSMCPN We had 3 LED lamps, all Philips, which switched on automatically at sunset and back of at sunrise. All 3 died in less than 2 years, and all within 2 or 3 months of each other.
I've had many incandescent bulbs last around 2 years.
I've got some ancient Philips 20W-equivalent bulbs from right at the start of the LED wave. Giant things, heatsink is 2/3rds of the body, yellow cap. Found image results that look like it by the name "Philips Master LED". Well over 12 years old now, they're still kicking. From the heat they put out, I don't think they use the shoddy capacitive dropper circuits that most modern LED bulbs use. If I recall correctly they were something like ~$30 CAD a piece at the time.
Yeah, they probably use japanese caps and a high quality power supply.
@@hunterbear2421 or _did_ at one point, I kinda doubt the new ones do, even from that same series
@@thewolfin newer series use cheapo power supply s half the time they are what fail rather then the led
@JSMCPN We had 3 ES base LED lamps, all Philips, which switched on automatically at sunset and back of at sunrise. All 3 died in less than 2 years, and all within 2 or 3 months of each other. Now trying no-name cheapies from Aliexpress.
There was an all white second series of this that had a miserable power supply causing intermittent flickering. Can confirm though the first yellow cap one is still going.
Watching in 2024, made me decide to get my 1975 c20 camper special back on the road! Thanks Derick!!
That output of the FULL BRIGE RECTIFIER is totally fine. There is however a Capacitor missing on the DC side
Well said, but I guess the three likes you have right now is as many as you'll get.
@@tomaskruger4671 Double that and give it to the next person
FULLLL BRIDGEE RECTIFIYAHHH!!!
Nearly all of them fail due to temperature cycling of solder joints. LED bulbs are tested by running them at a constant temperature at elevated stresses being ON continuously. A typical cheap-o indoor rated LED bulb lasts me about 3-5 years being constantly on in my outdoor light fixtures, which is longer than they last being used indoors where they switch on/off many times per day.
I'm still subscribed to you.
One of the main problems for LED fixtures is the form factor doesn't allow for proper cooling.
its not the soldering joints. all kinds of other heat cycled electronics handles heat cycles pretty well. and ive never seen any electronics fail in industry due to failed soldering joints yet. even though theres more extreme heat cycles there. its the fact that theyre ran at higher temps then they should. look up dubai lamps. a long with bad power supplies. the whole light industry is planned obsolence on steroids. always have been. its not even a conspiracy. it has been documented for about 100 years now
LED expert here, 20+ years in the industry. You are half correct, most of these use what are called 2835 size LED manufactured in China as cheap as possible. These use very thin wires to connect the die. These thin wires end up failing miserably due to heat cycling. The more cycles you have in a day the worse it gets. You're better off keeping them constantly on. Put them on a motion detector that keeps then long enough to heat up to temperature and you'll have to change the bulbs every 3 months.
As a plasma fanatic I just stick to fluorescent lamps. Most LEDs are boring for me. Filament style is OK but most other types are as ugly as the average mother-in-law.
3:54 that is a MELF resistor, one of the earlier SMD technologies, but still used because they can handle a lot more electrical stress than a similarly rated flat SMD package
hot melfs in your area... 😛
Melf, menstruating elf?
MELF stands for "Metal Electrode Leadless Face" but I think it actually stands for "Most End up Lying on the Floor" (because they're round they love to roll off of whatever surface you have them on).
I agree. To add a little more - they are often there as a "fusible resistor". Designed to both limit inrush current and act as a safety feature.
And they're used on the instrument panel of GM models circling around 2000. And they fall off, leaving one with dark odometer and gear indicators.
Component level troubleshooting + sardonic humor + relevant OG Star Trek clip? Magnificent!
If, by "OG", you mean "Original Guys" - OK. However, it's not TOS, but a later movie, and I'm not saying which - that would make me a Trekkie!
@NotBornEveryMinute The clip is from "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock", directly after Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, Sulu, and Checkov steal the Enterprise from Space Dock. Scotty is explaining how he disabled the overly-complex control systems of the pursuing Excelsior starship by removing a few parts.
Yes, I'm familiar with the clip, and have loved it for decades.
I have 15 LED night lights scattered around my house and garage. They each consume 0.5 watts, and they've been in place for at least 5 years. So far, only one has failed. I consider that a good record!
Excellent video! Or audio. I haven't watched this yet, just listened while walking at the beach and finding junk. Excellent! Fun!
Why do LED bulbs fail? At least those I've checked recently, had one LED burned cut, having a small black dot. Could be that they run a bit "hot" to get max lumens per their price, but detailed reason might be what happens when the power is turned on. I'm "seeing" there's a spike of overcurrent which eventually breaks one LED. I fixed those bulbs by shorting the broken LED. A bit less lumens, but for my use it doesn't matter. What matters, is the matter (the waste).
I've got LED bulbs that are close to 15 years old still working, and others that failed in a month. The no-name ones are the worst. Even the good ones gradually get dimmer as they age.
Yes they do definitely get dimmer. I am so sick of being in a house where all the light bulbs are dim AF. As for the so-called energy saving properties of LEDs, it is simply not true. At one time a room had a single light fitting for an incandescent bulb. And now the advice from places like IKEA, is that every room needs at least five light sources. Five LED bulbs and they can't even do the job of a single incandescent? Where is the energy saving there?
I mostly have no-name led bulbs in my house, some have gotten dimmer, but not one of them has died. The oldest ones are 15 year old cob type thingies.
@@lazygazzzer I think this has more to do with trends and bulb choices. LED bulbs are absolutely more energy efficient than an equivalent incandescent bulb there is zero question about that. Whether they are brighter is another question and has more do with bulb choice, quality, and personal preference of color temperature. As for rooms having multiple lights, that is more of a trend. I've also added a lot more lights to my house, but that's not because incandescents are brighter (i've still got a lot of rooms running only incandescents I stock piled), it's because I want more light, and no longer have to worry about burning a ton of extra power see properly.
Also something to keep in mind is that a lot of LEDs are actually not driven to their maximum potential because it's too bright for most people's preferences. Some have settings, but there are a few different flat panel fixtures that I've had to turn down because they were blindingly bright at full power.
@@lazygazzzer Wait, you're judging LED bulbs because a store that wants to sell you more lamps and bulbs told you to buy more lamps and bulbs? One LED bulb replaces one incandescent bulb just fine. Use your eyes and your brain instead of letting a company that's only trying to sell you more crap tell you what to think.
@@mjc0961 Well mister, I am currently sitting in a room in a fairly modern flat and it has three light fittings hanging from the ceiling. I will use my eyes and I will use my brain as you suggest. Two of the LED bulbs are barely putting out any light at all. They are no better than what you'd get from a candle. The other lamp has a fairly new LED bulb in it , replaced by myself about two weeks ago. That one is nice and bright. But it is no different from the other two as it came from the same pack of replacement bulbs. The thing is, in a few weeks time it will start getting dim like the other two and will probably continue like that for the remaining 80% of it's life cycle. And furthermore, I can make up my own mind about these things and don't need you to tell me that I can be swayed by some stupid shop. LED lights are crap and I would prefer Incandescent or halogen bulbs any time - but I can't get them because of some stupid ban on sales.
That looks like it could be a zinc casting rather than aluminum. Yeah, zinc alloys are much less efficient for heatsink material, but they mold into complex shapes really well and cost way less than the same casting in aluminum. It was soft enough to gouge deeply from your screwdriver tip, but all that leverage didn't stove in the metal surrounding it at all (like the same thickness aluminum probably would).
I've seen it before in other LED lights: the zinc is much better than no metal heat sink, and explain better why that bulb was oddly heavy. A large, thin sheet of aluminum like you found in that other bulb is arguably worse, made so thin to save money the heat travels poorly to its outer edges.
I agree. Zinc is cheap partly because of its very low melting point, much less heat required to cast it. The greater mass means a higher heat capacity, and it's larger, so more area to shed the heat from.
That shaky panichands pause and then double hand flip 11:29 after the explosive disassembly -- SO RELATABLE LOL. Because you KNOW there's that little window where you could be slashed to the bone and not feel anything...
I prefer to not having to do that. This was 100% predictable and avoidable.
It had me on the edge of my seat, like AVE offloading that clapped out mill from the little trailer. Knife with the blade out, prying with a screwdriver right over the easily scratched screen of the multimeter, and his booger hooks all waiting for a jab or cut.
I squirmed when I saw him pulling at that plastic. I always wear gloves when doing that kind of disassembly. I occasionally hurt myself wrenching on my vehicles where I can't where gloves, and sometimes look around seeing blood on the tools and checking closely to see where it came from.
Loved your presentation as well as the technical details.
Incredibly funny and I really needed a laugh today! Thanks.
The only channel I will watch immediately when a video comes out!
Yea
Yes
Fr
Same
yup same
Having the LED as a separate product as the PCB would be fantastic, it is how tube lights work after all.
You see a lot of recessed lighting separate the rest of the electronics from the LEDs themselves
not anymore. You can barely find t8 *anything*.
It's not always the LED's that fail. You could make the product modular so that the capacitors are replaceable as well as the LED's.
Ideally more consumers would be confident in using a soldering iron and buying replacement parts from a shop on the high street.
We do at least have separate drivers which can be replaced, but the difference between constant current and constant voltage is likely to remain esoteric for ever.
@@westinthewestmy city is fairly flat, and all of the streets are at the same height above sea level.
As a plasma fanatic I just stick to fluorescent lamps. Most LEDs are boring for me. Filament style is OK but most other types are as ugly as the average mother-in-law.
They weren't wrong about the LEDs having a long life, but they didn't say anything about those damn driver circuits did they?
(There is one tiny upside, if willing to take the time it's probably a good source for component harvesting.)
One last note, if your LEDs consistently have a short life - you should do some checks on the power coming out of the wall. It's likely you have a lot of noise or other waveform issues and need to voice complaints to the power company. Whatever it's doing to fry LEDs, it's also doing to all your other electronics.
As a plasma fanatic I just stick to fluorescent lamps. Most LEDs are boring for me. Filament style is OK but most other types are as ugly as the average mother-in-law.
Absolutely love your commentary! I was always curious why some LED bulbs go bad and others dont.
Dear friend Doubtful Technician, I strongly suggest wearing anti-cut gloves n eye protection as I ONCE suffered accidents cut myself opening the bulbs. These anti cut gloves really work. Love ur videos.
I’m used to a long explanation to answer question I wouldn’t know how to ask. Colour me tickled that someone actually answered a question I have silently asked myself 1000 times! Thanks for this. Subscribing!!
The whole concept of LED lighting for home use is flawed. Every frackin' bulb has to have electronics inside since all they'te thinking about is backward compatibility. When halogen lighting became popular, the conversion to low voltage was done outside the lamp, like it should. Replacing a popped bulb only meant replacing the actual lamp. Way cheaper and 100 times more environment friendly. I scavenge the local street lighting company once a week and even the retrofits for street lighting have this "all in one" approach. Many broken lamps just have the electronics fail prematurely because of getting too hot, bad components and moisture getting in. Newly built houses shoud have a separate circuit for low voltage lighting so all the lamp needs to contain are LED's and resistors.
If you start requiring a low voltage circuit in houses, you can expect that the power supplies that get installed will be very unreliable. Landlord's specials. And replacing those every 2 or 3 years, can be just as expensive as swapping out a 2 euro LED bulb, because the power supply will be a "Special Appliance" that is sold at a premium, or is located in such a place that your average homeowner gets unsure about replacing it themselves.
Your idea can absolutely work, though with switching regulators in the LED bulbs instead of resistors. Switching regulators can deal with some voltage drop over the wiring ensuring that the brightness of all LED lamps will be equal, and they will run a whole lot cooler than a resistor driven LED bulb, therefore increasing life span of the LED phosphors. Cost wise it does not matter. Those driver chips and some associated components get you to maybe 45 cents in total, wholesale.
I do not exactly know if you save a lot on heat production by running a switcher on low voltage rather than high voltage. But at least you can get rid of the bridge rectifier and filter capacitor, both of which are not uncommon to fail. I think one of the biggest benefits is that you can make the lamp housing out of metal, and use it as a big heat sink, safely. Theoretically you can do it too on mains voltage, but you need an isolation layer that thermally conducts.
But in the end, what counts is production cost, and even in the above scenario, corporations only strive for biggest profits with the lowest quality level the market still tolerates. They are not making those lamps for the good of the people, but only for the good of the shareholders.
@@mfbfreak _> "Landlord's specials"_
lol, I can attest to that. Rented an apartment a year ago or so. Low voltage lighting circuits throughout (bathrooms, kitchen, etc). Guess what failed first, two times in a row?
I was damn glad I made an agreement that any failures within the first month were landlord's problem.
I think the easiest and best option would be to have the electronics in the fixture, and have a variety of standardized LED arrays you can pop into them. (kind of like florescent fixtures)
@@mfbfreak the problem there is what voltage is the DC? Different LED lights require different raw DC voltage. So your house DC supply would have to be the highest necessary value or you would need DC/DC up converters to step it up for the larger lights. You still need either inefficient and heat generating/sensitive dropping/limitting resisters or DC/DC down converters (more efficient & less heat). So you probably do gain some reliability at the lights but you have now created a single point failure at the house lighting circuit supply. If that goes, then you loose all your lighting. You may also introduce more arching at the light switches. Separate lower voltage lines for switches with relays in the fixtures?
Not necessarily a bad idea but would really require some serious design and would have to come from either the government or an open-source industry consortium.
@@mfbfreak simple fix: your LED power supply is just a pc power supply
Thank you for your comedic entertainment while sparing me the work of ripping these components apart myself.
I thoroughly enjoyed your mixture of light hearted, self deprecating humor paired with very insightful troubleshooting demonstrations.
I wondered myself why these stupid LEDs don't hold up and was about to rip them apart to give them a shakedown.
You beat me to it, and I am grateful for it.
This was a fun video to watch! I like your use of tools to test things out -- you know your stuff! 👍
Thanks for doing up this video. Your frankness and honest human mistake stuff is great! 😂
Keep up the good work!🎉
Thanks for making video. I knew I wasn't crazy with all my LED Bulbs blowing out the same or sooner than my old school bulbs. Wish they built the electronics in a way that would make them replaceable as the LED's are fine. Thanks again.
That bulb where you exposed the inner workings at the 11:45 mark, on aircraft we call those TR (transformer/rectifier) units, to convert 115V/400 Hz AC to 28 VDC. Of course, they're a LOT bigger, heavier, and last a LOT longer despite the relatively large amount of DC current they output because they were built to high standards and cost crazy money. But, it's an aircraft and you can't just swap one out when you're at altitude. There are multiple units for redundancy and safety, which can autoswap onto the bus and hold a higher load for a while to get the aircraft to its destination.
You casually shorted out the mains with your test leads at 2:50 , you seem very comfortable around live AC which could be concerning 😅
Not a big deal. When I was a youngster (under 30) I electrocuted myself many a time.... Getting hit by a 240 circuit was fun. How did I get way over here?
That's what fuses and breakers are for.
@@markc2643 a very good breaker it was to trip instantly but wouldn't want to stake my life over it
Yes, he even put the circuit board on the heat sink.
Looks safe. 😂
“Like feeding a toddler spaghetti by candlelight” sounds like the analogy.
“How’s the car repair going?” “Like feeding a toddler spaghetti by candlelight.”
I LOVE incandescent. LEDs consistently give me headaches (migranes). Bad ones. Even the low light.
Also, LOVE this channel! You're like an ELI5 version of Big Clive with their own brand of humor! [**Hugs.**] I am subbing right away!
What an enjoyable video. I like your sense of humour, sir.
I have old ecosmart LED bulbs in the hallway that have been working for over a decade. A couple of the bulbs have 1 of 5 LEDs burnt out, but they're still plenty bright.
Meanwhile, one of my newer ecosmart bulbs died in just a few years. A capacitor blew its load, there was electrolyte all over inside of the bulb.
At least it didn't fail catastrophically, unlike the ancient CFL in my garage, in which the electronics melted its casing. That bulb was probably 20-25 years old, and it had U-tubes instead of the spiral tubes found in later CFLs. It produced very pink light when it worked!
That LED bulb sounds very "Ecosmart" to me...
I have owned a bulb-LED separator all these years, and I didn't know it!
All my led bulb fails have cracked shells or desoldered led diodes. Heat dissapation and thermal expansion seem to be the issues.
@@BlondieHappyGuy The base of these bulbs get ridiculously hot.
(recent LED bulb burn victim)
@@BlondieHappyGuyMake things shitty to save a cent.
Just seems wasteful.
led diode= light emitting diode diode. You don'thave to write diode twice.
As a plasma fanatic I just stick to fluorescent lamps. Most LEDs are boring for me. Filament style is OK but most other types are as ugly as the average mother-in-law.
@@BlondieHappyGuy You could drill a few holes into the plastic. It's probably worth the time when you buy a bunch of them
You need to buy quality bulbs from reliable company. I’m a property manager. I haven’t had to change a single one of the dozens and dozens I’ve put in. But I only buy Phillips bulbs.
Thank you for the insightful video. I've been repairing led lightstuffs here an there, and I agree that most of them fails because their power supplies failed. Luckily with the proliferation of tech gadgets I've amassed quite a collection of dc adapters with outputs anywhere from 1.9V to 24V, and with them I can usually clip off the supply and just soldered a dc socket. Power supply far away from heat generating component = long life.
Second type of failure is the other way around, where they cut costs of the led silicons themselves by using fewer of them and driving them to the edge of oblivion. These usually failed by dimming.
I really looked forward to a future where residential solar power is so ubiquitous that HVDC gained a standard in households, something like 48V or 50Vdc. Then all new light installations can simply use buck circuits.
Get commercial rated bulbs from a known vendor. Phillips master series or similar. They last a very long time. I think people don't remember how often we did in fact replace regular light bulbs. I haven't replaced any led bulbs in my house in 3 years or so. The ones that needed replacing were cheap crap not actually much more than an incandescent. With the incandescents you'd replace one somewhere every month or so.
Oh yeah, I remember replacing a light bulb about once a month or so when I was a kid. Now it's maybe once a year I'll find a flickering LED.
my incandescents have lasted years. sounds like you were buying the cheap ones
Every month? You must leave them on all the time. For the living room, I think I replaced them every 6 months to 1 year.
Because they are rated for 1000 h, which means 1000 h / 5 h per night = 200 days.
Other locations probably were every 2 y.
We usually use 60 W bulbs and I still have some.
Every month?
That's not good, I never replaced mine that often.
@@louistournas120 It was normal to replace one every couple weeks because they would all be varying ages and not dying at the same time.
I've found that newer LED bulb designs produce a lot less heat, and so far seem to be lasting longer. It's also worth noting it depends on what fixture you put it in. As some fixtures can dissipate the heat well, and some (nipple/boob cheap lamp fixtures) have poor to no heat venting. For incandescent or compact fluorescent bulbs this was fine and did not accelerate their death (except for some CFLs), but boy does it ever accelerate the death of LED bulbs! (if they get hot enough). So kinda wish you had covered the fixtures each were used in more closely, as this detail I'd say is very important.
This is exactly the problem. Incandescent bulbs, CFLs and LEDs all have different constraints for long life, but end users rarely care or even know about them. For CFLs, short on/off cycles are a death sentence. For LEDs it is poor heat dissipation more than anything else.
The packaging on some cheap LED bulbs will tell you not to use in enclosed fixtures. I had a light fixture that was killing LED bulbs in less than a year and found this to be the issue. Spent a bit more on some better LEDs approved for use in enclosed fixtures and they have been lasting much longer.
I changed all our lighting to LED when moving into our present house in 2016 ... so 8 years ago. We have a lot of bulbs of many different sizes and types. So far the only failure has been an LED strip light in the garage. We are undoubtedly doing better than the incandescent or compact fluorescent types.
While saving on electricity.
@@whyme5024 I'll say! LEDs use a fraction of compact flourescents ... and don't even mention a true incandescent bulb!
@@whyme5024 That is not such a issue where I leave. Since I have to run heating for 8 month in a year, incadenscent heat is not lost during that time, it just helps house heating. Actually I have a pair of BR30 over my head in the office, and I like them warm over my head for those 8 month, so I switch them to incandescent for winter, and back to LED for summer. Of course there is no point running incandescents outside, or a cold storage room, or really garage.
When you played some steel drum Jimmy Buffet bit on the meter I no longer cared if I learned anything I was laughing too hard!
Definitely subscribed~
It does my heart good to see a work area as messy as mine. Keep up the good work.
"Orange Store Bad" lmao
Guessing some bad experiences at Orange Store, mixed with a reference to a former President and Presidential candidate with an unusual complexion?
@@soundspark there was no mixed reference but good try
@@soundspark Isn't every experience at Orange Store bad? I've also had universally bad experiences at Blue Store. They both buy the cheapest possible Chinese trash and fill their entire store with it and make every customer walk two miles to find the tiniest component.
Good bait for the politically obsessed to bicker about.
Hehe
My aunt works at Orange store. I took her to Green Midwestern store and she said it was significantly better than Orange store.
This is so incredibly enjoyable, love your sense of humor :)
Solution is to install a big gq transformer for every light switch that brings down to 12v and use 12V LEDs. They last forever then, mine has lasted more than 7 years so far. Transformer can't be to far from LEDs though.
I've been tossing cheap LED bulbs in the garbage not because they *fail* but because they start flickering. Waveform Lighting makes some nice flicker free bulbs, but they're expensive. Trying out some Phillips 'flicker free EyeComfort technology' bulbs in the kitchen, so far so good. Still running Sylvania incandescent floods in my living room ceiling cans, that light quality is unmatched by LED.
Thanks for the interesting explanation of the various components of the circuits. I have the same issue of premature failure with my LEDs.
If I could I'd buy you a beer! You're informative content laced with lighthearted humor is very enjoyable. Looking forward to more from you.
Well at least he salvaged a few good components to repurpose.
Got a drawer full of them I never use.
@@Hclann1 oh well for you
Thank you?
I can see Big Clive sitting back right now with a bottle o' gudd stuff he nicked off brother Ralphie
The only question is how many fartulations did the bottle of good stuff get in the soda stream first?
Great video! I've always wondered about these. I didn't understand much, but I absolutely agree that 5000K lighting is madness.
was going to do this myself...
so thanks for the shortcut!
If you installed some sort of heatsink would the bulbs last longer?
ive had one running near 12hrs a day for the last 16 odd years and still going.
Many years ago, home depot use to sell Cree LED Bulbs with lofty claims of longevity. I would save my receipts for the challenge, and everytime they burn out, I would bring it back for warranty claim.
Ha!
Cree is a legit brand. Today with rampant counterfeiting there's no way you can know what you're really getting unless you pull it off an assembly line yourself. I wouldn't put it past the Home Depot to be selling "Cree" bulbs made somewhere other than Cree in China. Home Depot is not on Cree's list of authorized distributors.
Specifically eco smart, been tearing them down for years now when they die and every iteration I notice they use less and less materials and push they led’s harder and they usually fail in less than two years by either flickering for no reason at random or just flat out not turning on
Same unreliable experience with ecosmart. I paid more and got some Phillips and they run cool and flicker free. Much better bulb.
@@kmschwem yeah, I bought a crap ton of Phillips led bulbs when they all went clearance at the Home Depot I work at, all work perfectly other than their odd ball 250w equivalent led bulbs that they have with the soft glow feature, had two of them just randomly fail a little after 6 months of maybe 5-10 minutes of use a day (basement lighting) no flicker no nothing, juts flat out wouldn’t turn on but all the the led filament stuff is excellent so far
Thank you for truly answering a question that I have wondered about for years. I could never understand how something supposed to last many years - doesn't.
Like you said at the end of the video, if you treat the LEDs well it can last a lifetime. Did you know that LEDs degrade over time due stress by over powering the LEDs? Mostly not a problem of your eyesight when you discover you can't read something, it is just degradation of the LEDs. Most manufacturers include 50% degradation as still usable in the warranty specification. Second, we always talk about LED but it is actually a LED package, there are mostly more than one LEDs inside a package. I have seen a tiny package with 12 LEDs inside. That is why the LED package can get so bright and hot because they are packed so close together, it is almost impossible to dissipate all of the heat especially when overdriven. Inside a closed enclosure, it is even worse. That is why the bulbs fail sooner, heat is the enemy of all kind of electronics.
What I did with most of my LED lighting is to reduce the current, remove the (excessive) heat. This really helps. Reducing the current effects the amount of light it can produce a little but it is worth to do so because there is a less heat, low degradation, longer lifetime and lower power consumption. That is a win!
Do you do this to separate light bulbs, or is this on special projects that you create?
I have had *and have* incandescent bulbs that last decades. At least 4 for some of my older lamps. I tried fluorescent bulbs when they came out a decade or two ago. I bought a Chinese made box of them at Best Buy on sale one day. Installed one by one I watched them stop working over the course of a year. I just swapped them out from the box at first. Then the show stopper. I walked into a room and turned on the overhead light and was met with immediate sputtering, and most worrying, actual smoke and small red sparks falling, coming from the base of the bulb. That ended the life span of fluorescent bulbs from Chine in my house.
About a year ago, due primarily to my running out of stored incandescent bulbs I began to use LED bulbs. I have yet to have one last 6 months. I have one in a hall that works sometimes. Luckily it isn't the only light in that hallway. Apparently whenever an alien spacecraft enters or departs our atmosphere it turns on or off. There is no discernible regular interval between turning on and off. Sometimes it turns off for a half hour, sometimes for just 4 or 6 minutes, sometimes for 2 or 3 hours. It is the only LED on that circuit so whatever is happening is either internal to the bulb, or some kind of interference caused by alien space ships crossing the Van Allen Radiation belt or Chinese experimental firing of their Ion cannon. Luckily at an auction I was able to pick up some more incandescent bulbs. My intention is to wait another decade (or two) before again trying LED technology as a cure for darkness.
It is pretty obvious here that at the current stage of development any talk about LED lights saving the consumer money is just scammer talk (aka BS) once the cost replacing failed LED light bulbs is factored in. Maybe in a decade there will be reliability improvements, but as a consumer, I will wait and see.
You should have a qualified electrician inspect your circuits.
@@user-hm5zb1qn6g LoL I have. It isn't the circuits, it is the cheap manufacturing of the LEDs.
An easy way to remember the resistor color code: Bad boys R our young girls but Violet gives willingly. That's the way I learned it 40 years ago and it stuck.
I learned that from my older brother who was in electronics too about that time but was uncomfortable with the R word he used(which I noticed you didn't mention) .I substituted that R word with the socially acceptable Jamaican slang "Rate" which means to Revere.
In HS freshman electronics shop, the teacher taught us the ‘official' mnemonic for the color code (Big Boys Race Our Young Girls But Violet Generally Wins), then suggested that we ask the juniors to tell us the 'other' version. We all of course used the ‘other' one
Possibly the best electronics video I've ever watched. He's great. I +thought+ the electronics were the parts that failed, and so it turns out to be. Thank you for this, and your sense of humor.
I just clicked on this video so I could comment that I own all Philips Hue LED lights (the ones that change colors as you can get ones that do not), and I have never had one fail on me! The oldest two Hue lights I have are about to be 10 years old and still going strong. I got them in 2015 when I moved into my current apartment, that is how I remember when I got them. Maybe you mentioned this in your video, which I will watch eventually, but what brand you buy definitely matters in how long LED lights last! So Philips Hue, or Philips Master Series and you will be good for well over a decade, making them well worth the money!
First time i've seen in the history of yt that someone fixes a framerate issue! great video! hail the algorithm!
4:50 Patent rejected due to prior art. And I think also some "trivial" clause applies.
Big Clive already has the patent on the "vise of knowledge"
I’ve lived in this house now 20 years. The incandescent bulbs in my kitchen and two bathrooms at least that old, never changed. Same for the halogens in dining and living room.
If you want some decent quality LEDs at reasonable prices I recommend taking a look at sylvania bulbs. I don't trust most no-name brands for home lighting. I have had some bad experience with Feit bulbs and I have a disdain for Philips as they took away the ability to have smart bulbs work locally and not have to create an account or send data to the cloud.
I've had good luck with the "house" brands at certain dedicated online bulb stores - so far they've lasted infinitely longer (in that NONE have failed yet) than anything from the box stores or the online scammy river store.. Compared to the ones from the box stores, some of which failed within 5 hours of use
Ok just watched this video and just discovered the channel and I must say awesome and hilarious. The innuendos had me laughing pretty good.
You have a great voice for this. Watched the whole thing. 😊
hehe 1:20 Duty.
3.4 years of constant duty is a lot of duty.
Makes me upset that my local Lowes and Walmart won't stock incandescent bulbs unless it a oven or microwave bulb. We're all forced to buy garbage marked as a good products.
But even the worst quality led bulb is better than the best quality incandescent bulb. Like, by far. Wastes 10x more power for the same lumens. LEDs cost about the same and generate basically no heat. Also, no incandescent bulb ever, lasted more than 2 years, unless it was one of those super dim ones like 20w or less. Source: Me, I am from the 20th century. Back in the day replacing light bulbs was a monthly task around the house. Especially super bright ones like 200w bulbs didn't last at all.
@Wes12940 i have repurposed these types of led boards, found a few that fall in line with my cordless tool batteries along with buck converters, and made outdoor security lighting.
No one is forcing you to buy garbage bulbs like those in this video. You you choose to buy those instead of the good quality ones, don't complain.
You can still get rough service bulbs I think? Somehow they got exempted from the ban. They ain't cheap though.
@@ukaszsmoa8416 Running LEDs off house current just doesn't work well. There's no way around the voltage difference. LEDs really don't like high voltage AC. The parts capable of doing the conversion don't like living next to LEDs. That goes for good, bad and indifferent qualities.
I bought a bunch of LEDs around 10 years ago. Half of them crapped out within a year and the others are still going strong. The ones going strong probably paid for the others by now.
As long as they're cheap enough, it's probably not worth the cost of fixing a failed LED bulb. But this kind of work can show which bulbs are better than the others. You've also made me realize how much more tech is involved in LED bulbs than incandescent bulbs.
Super enjoyable stuff!
FYI, it's the high voltage electrolytic capacitors that go bad first. You need ESR meter to detect the problem. A capacitance meter will often show proper capacity while the ESR is too high for the capacitor to function.
Feit and Phillips have worked very well for me. Haven't replaced one yet and some are well over 10 years old. Every Cree bulb I've owned has failed relatively quickly.
I purchased a pack of 6 LED bulbs branded as KOR on Amazon, in 2022 and all of them that are in use today still work fine. Tho I guess the quality of these really does vary a lot. I've been a bit concerned about the longevity of them having seen videos of bulbs that have failed early, but so far my experience seems to be quite good. They are rated for 15000 hours of life and I've calculated that as being roughly 2 years of being on 24/7 I have a bulb in a lamp I use in my bedroom which often gets left on for many hours a day sometimes overnight, and its still working today, tho it might have dimmed a bit, but I haven't compared it against a brand new bulb.
I personally can be happy with a 5 year lifespan for LED bulbs as I've been using those halogen incandescent before and those only seem to last about 7 months in my experience.
As a contractor, I have installed dozens of outdoor LED motion Sensing flood lights. 3/4 of them have been 120 VAC, and 1/4 of them Solar powered. ALL of the 120 VAC units have failed within 13-15 months of installation, all from the power supply failures of various kinds (just past the warranty expiration). I did post-mortems on all of them and the LED's are all working fine. All of the Solar Powered units are still working, two of them for over 7 years on the same cheap battery. Yeah, the complexity of the conversion electronics have been the downfall on each of the AC units.
You had me laughing and chuckling throughout. It's like I'm watching an EE version of This Old Tony. Or a younger and less jaded AvE! Either way, subscribed and will go through your catalog of vidjeos. Also, you missed a golden opportunity to engage your safety squints. But hilarious, nonetheless. I think you'll do well on YT. You have the three required elements of a successful channel. Entertaining, Genuine, and Informative. Every successful channel has those three qualities (IMO) FINALLY, I'm glad you're fighting the good fight against Big LED!! LOL.
I like this guy's approach to repair. It matches my own.
I smashed those like and subscribe buttons.
I was an electrical project manager for large construction firm for many many years. Back when LEDs first started coming out for commercial use, since we would buy millions of dollars of lighting , asked if we'd like to try some of the new fangled LED fixtures just starting to be produced, which I did. As usual we got the 120,000 hours of guaranteed life of the LEDs with them failing quite regularly. Talking to the manufacturer's engineers I was informed that the guarantee only applied to the LED only and not the drivers that are needed to make the LEDs function. Even today, trying to get them to replace fixtures that fail, you will still get the same thing, "The LEDs are fine, but the driver has failed and we don't warrantee drivers."
Thank you for this, most illuminating, ahem. This has been bugging me for a while, and I'm getting cynical about whether LEDs offer much environmental advantage if you have to throw them away every few months. Here in the UK we have nominal 240v AC. However the voltage that I receive is in fact usually 250v and sometimes more. Do you think that this might be affecting the lifespan of the bulbs? Also, do you think that more expensive bulbs might last longer?
For this sort of work I made a pair of probes using sewing needles and BIC biro tubes. Gives you very sharp points than can easily punch through crap, and into the metal enough so they never slip. The biro tubes provide strong well insulated probe 'handles'.
I bought my house almost 9 years ago. I did heavy research and bought cree bulbs and replaced every existing bulb in the house. Some of those have been replaced with RGB smart bulbs at various points. Not one has failed. Total number of bulbs, 17 recessed fixtures, 8 lamps, 4 ceiling fixtures, several closet and basement lights, and probably some I am forgetting.
LOL - you are very entertaining - but I'd better go waste my time on the good book on the downstairs couch. :)
P.S. I just subscribed to you.
As someone that used to work in the electronics field but now in HVAC I can see how the LEDs don't last as long as stated on packaging. You hit both points with manufacturing practices of penny pinching and the heat issue. I see in my building I live in they have many fixtures that are designed for incandescent bulbs to be installed and they now have residing in them the imposter LEDs. Because of the construction of the fixtures for the heat production of incandescent bulbs, they have insulation in between the bulb housing and the building drywall. That traps the heat inside the fixture along with the glass diffuser. All of that means the bulbs literally cook themselves to death. The second point to make here is that most of the life expectancy of bulbs is based on an expected time the bulb will be lit in a day. Generally they go with 6 hours a day (look at the packaging to see what they base it off of for an idea). The manufacturing is always going to bite you in the end. With parts being barely held on with the solder and the heat they will be seeing, you can expect a shorter life. I generally get fixtures that are dimming acceptable and use a dimmer to drive them at a lower power and therefor the fixture lasts longer. Yes I get the whole LED fixture instead of the screw in bulbs for most of my fixtures. The only one that still has an Edison base is the ceiling fan fixture.
Well, you explained why these bulbs not only fail early but often flicker incessantly like they're having a seizure while they're on. Haven't been able to figure this out since I started using them in recessed lighting fixtures in my kitchen...
This was a valuable use of my time. thankyou for the teardowns and analysis
I have done a few LED bulb autopsies as well. The older ones with switch mode don't have capacitors rated to last the claimed lifetime given the temperature inside the bulb. A capacitor lifetime is rated at its max temperature and voltage and that is not as long the bulb lifetime, so it needs to have a voltage and or temperature rating way over what it experiences to get the lifetime required.
I also had one that used the wrong sort of silicone glue for electronics. It has to be a special type that doesn't emit acid when it cures. The PCB traces were corroded away.
The more modern linear regulators get too hot when the mains voltage is towards the top of its spec. I have seen some that use heatsink compound to connect the chip on the PCB to the metal bulb base. Heatsink compound is designed to fill microscopic surface defects, not bridge large gaps.